"Don't you think you've tormented enough golfers for today?" I asked as I looked up at the raven perched on a tree branch above us. "I'm getting hungry, I want to go home and make some lunch."
Cara tilted her head and almost shrugged her wings, but her attention remained focused on the nearby fairway. Another foursome had just arrived, and one of them was teeing up while his friends stood by and watched.
"She needs to practice her magic too Aster," my favourite little arctic kitsune reminded me. "It's not just about you and I, you know?"
I sighed, "I know that Yuki, but we've been here for hours and I'm getting hungry."
"Fore!" the golfer yelled before making his swing.
That was followed by the thwack of his club hitting the ball, and it looked like a pretty good shot. At the same time our raven friend took to the air and swooped out a few dozen meters above the fairway. She didn't get too close, but as she passed overhead an inexplicable gust of wind caught the small white orb and gave it a strong push off course.
"What the - ?!" the golfer exclaimed as his ball curved hard to the right, then disappeared into the trees beyond the golf course property line.
Meanwhile Cara's flight brought her around in a large loop, and she soon landed back on the tree branch above us once again. The raven sounded very smug and proud of herself as she announced, "That makes seventeen golf eggs I've liberated from their cruel human masters."
"You know they're not eggs right?" I asked. "They're balls. And they're meant to be hit, that's how the game works."
She ruffled her feathers slightly, "They look like eggs. And only humans would make a so-called game out of beating helpless eggs with iron clubs."
"She makes a good point," Yuki chimed in with a smile on her face.
"No she doesn't," I said as I rolled my eyes. "The balls aren't even egg-shaped. Not that there aren't plenty of valid reasons to dislike golf. For one thing it's a huge waste of good land, and golf courses use way too much water. Then there's all the chemicals they add to the environment, like insecticides and pesticides and fertilizer and whatever else they do to keep the grass perfectly manicured."
"The whole thing's just a celebration of man's so-called domination over nature," I added with a scowl.
After a few seconds I sighed and shook my head, "Anyways I'm going home to get something to eat. Cara if you want to stay here and keep rescuing golf balls by yourself be my guest. You can find your own way back to the flat when you're ready."
We were visiting Wild Park, a nature reserve just outside of Brighton. It covered over two hundred hectares, with plenty of woods and footpaths. There was even an iron age hill fort that was kind of interesting. And right next to the park was the golf course which had attracted our raven's ire, along with her magic.
She'd discovered her newfound powers back on Saturday afternoon, not long after Yuki unlocked her lightning magic. Cara's new gift wasn't related to transformations like mine, even though she could shift back and forth between human and raven. Instead her talent was manipulating air or wind, which seemed kind of appropriate for a bird. And since then she'd mostly used it to cause all sorts of mischief.
Now it was Tuesday, and we'd spent almost all our time over the last few days experimenting and getting more familiar with these strange new powers we'd received. I was getting pretty good at controlling my transformations, it was almost easy making smaller changes like becoming taller or shorter, or older or younger. I could even change my appearance to look like someone else entirely if I wanted.
I always returned to my normal default form when I dismissed the transformations though. My new natural shape was a three-tailed kitsune girl with purple eyes, black hair, and black fur on my ears and tails. And that made me very happy.
On the other hand there was still one transformation I hadn't attempted yet, which was going all the way into a full quadrupedal kitsune. So far all the different forms I'd changed into were human, or humanoid kitsune. I was pretty sure I could do the full fox thing, but I needed a bit more time to work up the courage and confidence before I was ready to give it a try.
Meanwhile it seemed like Yuki didn't have any transformation magic at all. When she fronted our body automatically shifted into her arctic kitsune form, with white hair ears and tails, and pink eyes, but she didn't seem to have any control over that. In fact we speculated that maybe it was my magic that made the change to our body, so she'd be more comfortable while fronting.
Her magic was all about controlling and manipulating electricity, and in a few short days she'd already got pretty good at it. She could throw little lightning bolts up to a few meters away, but that was actually kind of dangerous and she'd already damaged a few things back at our flat. Which was one of the reasons we'd come out to the park, so she and Cara could practice their magic without causing any more damage at home.
The little arctic kitsune had also figured out how to drain power from anything around her, leaving any nearby batteries completely flat. She could even cause a small localized blackout if she wanted. She could do the reverse too, like she could fully charge a mobile phone just by touching it.
"Why don't we pack a lunch next time?" Yuki suggested as we started heading back to the carpark where we left our bike. "Then we could stay out here all day long."
Cara followed just above us in the air as she agreed, "Quite. And while I could certainly fly back to the flat faster than you can get there on your motorcycle, I prefer to ride with you. After all, what is the point of having my own support fox if I don't take full advantage of her?"
"I am {...} your support fox!" I reminded her for umpteenth time. Then my tails twitched as I insisted, "I asked you to {keep} doing that!"
Finally I gave up and sighed, "Whatever, have your fun."
"I intend to, but thank you for the endorsement Aster," the bird replied. And I'd swear she had a smug smile on her beak as she flew past.
That was just one example of the mischief she'd figured out with her magic. She was able to manipulate sound, since it moved through air. She could caw loud enough to crack glass or leave folks stunned, but she delighted in using it to mess with people while they were speaking. She could suppress words, or even replace them with other words if she'd heard the person speak those words previously.
When we reached the carpark we all climbed on the bike together. The raven nestled up against my chest just before I did up our jacket, and my fox ears smoothly shifted into human ears as I slipped on our helmet. I had that down to a fine art already, it was subtle enough that anyone watching would think my ears were squished up inside the helmet. And it was just as smooth taking the helmet off, my fox ears returned before the helmet cleared top of our head.
That was convenient too, because I looked into getting a customized fox-ear-friendly helmet the day before and found out it was basically impossible. Nobody would modify an off-the-shelf helmet, because doing so would invalidate the safety rating. And getting a custom one-off helmet properly rated would be prohibitively expensive.
As we set off for the short ride home Yuki asked, "Are we going to come back out again for more practice after lunch?"
"I don't know yet," I shrugged. "I was thinking we should probably spend some time this afternoon looking for work."
"Oh right," she pouted.
After a lot of thought and discussion on Sunday we both agreed not to return to our job at the factory. It wasn't exactly great work, and we decided that it wasn't worth the hassle to try and convince them who we really were. I also had some concerns about safety, since we operated a machine on an assembly line. I was positive they wouldn't have protocols in place for employees who had three big floofy tails sticking out behind them, and the last thing I wanted was to get my floof caught in some moving parts.
So we emailed our manager Sunday evening that we wouldn't be coming back, and that was that. They weren't happy with us, but it's not like they could fire us or anything. On the other hand it did mean we needed to find a new job soon, since we only had enough money to cover next month's rent, and a week or two of food.
When we got back to the flat I fixed up a sandwich for Yuki and I, and put some left-overs on a little plate for our bird. Then we settled down on the sofa in front of the TV to eat while we caught up on the news. Today's top news story was kind of worrying though.
"This has to be related to the impossible mountain, right?" I asked with a frown. "How can they be talking about evacuating all those communities without even mentioning it?"
Yuki shook her head, "Someone has to be suppressing it. It's just so obvious, by not making the connection they're all but telling us they're related but someone doesn't want them to say it."
The last couple days there'd been some unconfirmed reports of people getting sick up in Scotland, in and around the Cairngorm National Park. Now they were talking about evacuating the entire park. Not just the little villages and hamlets, but they were preparing to evacuate the larger towns too.
That was a bit of a shock, hearing the news anchors talk about clearing out towns like Aviemore and Grantown-on-Spey. The real shock came a few moments later, when they confirmed that the mystery illness had started turning up well outside the Cairngorms. Now they were reporting cases as far away as Inverness and Aberdeen. Which meant that whatever it was, it was spreading.
It wasn't just Scotland either, there were reports of that same mysterious illness from other countries too. Over on the continent both Austria and the Czech Republic were affected. There were even more reports of sickness across the pond, in both America and Canada.
"Another thing that's strange is how there's no mention of other people like us," Yuki added after a few moments. "Like we've seen stuff on social media for the past few days. There was even that picture someone took of us at the Tesco on Saturday."
That made me cringe, "I'm glad the news are ignoring us. The last thing we need is a bunch of media folks turning up outside our door."
"Or the army," Cara pointed out.
"Right," I agreed with a little shudder.
She was referring to something else we saw on social media the other day. Apparently a 'beast person' was shot and killed by the Americans, but the incident was quickly suppressed. And as much as I liked to think our military weren't as trigger-happy here, I wasn't willing to bet our lives on it.
With those unhappy thoughts on my mind I startled rather hard when someone suddenly knocked at our door. My ears folded back and my tails twitched in alarm as I turned to stare at it.
"We're not expecting anyone right?" I whispered. "Maybe we should ignore it?"
Before either Yuki or Cara could respond there was another loud knock at the door, as if whoever was out there heard me.
Then Yuki whispered back, "We can look after ourselves if it's trouble. Between my lightnings and Cara's wind, we can handle almost anything."
"Should I make myself look human?" I asked softly as I slowly got to my feet.
Our raven friend ruffled her feathers slightly then stated, "No. Be proud of who and what you are, Aster."
"Anyways you're my support fox," she added with a sniff. "Not my support human."
I didn't bother arguing that point this time. My ears remained folded back and my tails were down low between my legs as I quietly approached the door. I stretched up and took a peak through the little peep hole then frowned at the odd-looking girl I saw waiting in the hallway.
She seemed vaguely familiar, although I couldn't remember if I'd seen her before. She looked about eighteen or nineteen, she was average height, maybe a half dozen centimetres taller than me. Her skin was a sort of tawny colour, and looked absolutely flawless. She almost looked like a model in fact. Her eyes seemed dark, almost black, except when she moved her head slightly they seemed to be more of a golden colour. Her hair was like that too, she had it in numerous small tight braids that all hung down to her shoulders, and they seemed to be either black or gold depending how you looked at them.
Her clothes on the other hand looked like she'd taken them from a lost-and-found. She wore faded denim capris that had their share of holes and patches, and an old white tank-top with some cracked and wrinkled silkscreen across the front. Ontop of that was an old army surplus style jacket that was hanging open. Instead of any kind of military insignia she had an anarchist patch at her left shoulder and an anti-oil patch on the right.
She also had a khaki canvas bag hanging from a strap over her left shoulder like a purse. It was decorated in countless buttons, pins, and iron-on patches, that seemed to be a mix of eco-friendly and pride-related stuff.
It was obvious she wasn't a reporter or a soldier, so I figured she was safe.
"Hello?" I asked as I opened up the door. "What can I do for you?"
The girl smiled as she looked me up and down, then to my surprise she walked right past me uninvited. As she strolled into the living-room she replied, "Aster, Yuki, it's wonderful to finally meet you two. You both look fantastic!"
"Really wasn't expecting to see another kitsune today though, let alone two!" she added quietly, as if she was talking to herself. Then she addressed our raven friend, "And Cara, it's lovely to see you! You've all done remarkably well for yourselves in the past few days."
"Yes we have," our raven agreed as she perched atop the back of the sofa. "Thanks entirely to my leadership and Yuki's resourcefulness of course. And my loyal support fox helped too."
I ignored the bird as I focused on our mystery guest and demanded, "Who are you? And how do you know our names?"
Cara ruffled her feathers and stated, "She's the Earth Mother. Or some people call her Mother Nature."
My eyes widened as I looked at the raven, but before I could ask if she was kidding our guest confirmed it herself.
"Actually I'm going by Gaia now," the teenage girl explained. "It's short and simple, less of a mouthful, gets right to the point."
Yuki's ears were folded back and her tails all down as well, and she was practically hiding inside our head. She sounded a little nervous as she asked, "How do you know I'm here too? Can you see me, or hear me?"
Sure enough Mother Earth was able to hear my headmate, which if nothing else at least confirmed the girl was magical in some way.
The teen replied, "Of course I can see and hear you, Yuki. I'm aware of every one of my children, and that includes all living things on my world."
"I hope you don't expect me to start sending you cards on mothers day," Cara stated in a haughty tone.
Gaia actually laughed, "Of course not."
"So why is Mother Nature here to see us?" I asked uneasily. "It's not because of the magic, is it? I know Cara's caused some mayhem, but we've been careful not to hurt anyone. And we've done our best to keep it hidden too."
The girl's expression became serious again and she shook her head, "Don't worry Aster, none of you are an any kind of trouble."
"Although I admit you three were a bit of an unexpected surprise," she added quietly, like she was talking to herself again. Rather than elaborate on that she smiled at the three of us and announced, "In fact I'm busy today doing some recruiting, which is why I've come to see you girls. I have a job opportunity that -"
"We'll take it!" Yuki interrupted. Her tails were all wagging and her ears stood up tall and proud as she insisted, "Whatever you want us to do, we're the right kitsune and raven for the job! And we're available to begin immediately!"